Fiona Reynolds

Dame Fiona Reynolds DBE has been director-general of the National Trust since January 2001. In March 2012 she announced she was leaving the organisation to take up the post of Master at Emmanuel College at Cambridge University in the Autumn.

Before taking up the post she was director of the Women’s Unit in the Cabinet Office and was previously director of the Council for the Protection of Rural England (now Campaign to Protect Rural England) and secretary to the Council for National Parks.

Reynolds was involved with the Trust for many years prior to this as a member of the Trust’s Council and the Thames and Chilterns regional committee, and she chaired the local committee for Sutton House in Hackney. Reynolds was awarded the CBE for services to the environment and conservation in 1998 and was made a Dame ten years later.

As we return for our sixth year, our theme is ‘challenges shared’, emphasising that Trustee Exchange has always been produced by trustees, for the benefit of trustees, but also for chief executives and company secretaries.

The National Trust is a charity with 3.5 million members and 49,000 volunteers that looks after 700 miles of coastline, 245,000 hectares of countryside, 300 historic houses and gardens, and dozens of other special places. Fiona Reynolds, its director-general, describes her big issue.